Investor Connect Podcast

Illusion of External Agency Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Illusion of external agency is defined by Wikipedia as when people view self-generated preferences as instead being caused by insightful, effective, and benevolent agents. Founders often believe someone else can make their fundraiser successful. The respo...

Group Attribution Error Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Group attribution error is defined by Wikipedia as the biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole. Startups often project the characteristics of one investor on the entire group when the group i...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Jonathan Stidd, President at DealMaker Reach. Located in Toronto, ON, Canada, DealMaker is on a mission to create the most sophisticated capital markets tools on the planet, empowering capital to flow faster. It offers a suite of primary issuance, shareholder management, and capital raising solutions that includes equity crowdfunding, investor ran...

Zero-Risk Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Zero-risk bias is defined by Wikipedia as the preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk. Customers will choose a product that eliminates risk over another product that has a greater price reduction. For example, you could o...

Survivorship Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Survivorship bias is defined by Wikipedia as concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility. Incubators often measure their results based on startups that get fu...

Subjective Validation Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Subjective validation is defined by Wikipedia as the perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. In developing products founders look for information that matches their own view of the problem and solution. Founders build thei...

Pseudo-certainty Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The pseudocertainty effect is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes. As the startup finds success, the founder becomes more risk-averse be...

Authority Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Authority bias is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure and be more influenced by that opinion. Founders seek experts in various roles to help grow their startups. In particular, this occurs when the f...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Ethan Rigel, Founder, and Managing Partner at Gore Range Capital. Located in New York City, New York, USA, Gore Range Capital is focused on investments in early-stage skin health businesses. Their approach is simple: they invest in what they know. Over the course of their respective careers, the Gore Range team has built domain expertise and exten...

Optimism Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The optimism bias is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes Startup founders often focus solely on the opportunity while ignoring the risks. Skeptical investors do the opposite by focusing on the risks...

Ostrich Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The ostrich effect is defined by Wikipedia as ignoring an obvious negative situation. It's common among founders to ignore the challenging parts of the startup such as competitive position or weakness of the product, and more. Some founders handle it by not paying att...

Planning Fallacy Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The planning fallacy is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to underestimate task completion times. Projects take twice as much time and cost as planned. First-time founders don't have previous experience and cannot rely upon past projects when making plans. Some f...

Pro-Innovation Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The pro-innovation bias is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses. Startups overestimate the speed of ad...

Projection Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The projection bias is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one's current preferences, thoughts, and values, thus leading to suboptimal choices Founders who hire team members in the early stage come to realize that dif...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Sarah Jennings, Director of Beyond Angels, and Co-Founder at Beyond Capital Funds. Located in Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas, The Beyond Capital Funds invests alongside established VCs targeting Late-Seed to Series A investment opportunities in disruptive innovation such as Artificial Intelligence, Next Generation Internet, Software as a Servi...

Omission Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The omission bias is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful inactions (omissions). Founders will often omit details rather than give outright lies when pitching their startup to an inves...

Observer Expectancy Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The observer expectancy bias is defined by Wikipedia as when a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it. Startups will take customer feedback and ignore the elements tha...

Normalcy Bias Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The normalcy bias is defined by Wikipedia as the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster that has never happened before. First-time startups suffer from the normalcy bias as they have limited experience with what can happen to startups over time. Founders with pre...

Money Illusion Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The money illusion effect is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to concentrate on the face value of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power. In pricing the product, a startup should list their product price in the smallest unit possible such as dail...

Illusory Truth Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The illusory truth effect is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. In a startup pitch, facts repeated several times can in...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes David Hurwitt, CEO & Founder at Troove. Located in Burlington, Vermont, USA, Troove is the first technology to harness the power of alumni and current student experience to help potential students make the biggest decision of their life. Troove use predictive AI to gather, mine, and decode experience data from schools and align it with the values,...

Singularity Effect Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The singularity effect is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to behave more compassionately to a single identifiable individual than to any group of nameless ones. People in general feel compelled to help individuals. In a disaster scenario such as an earthquake...

Reactive Devaluation Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Reactive devaluation is defined by Wikipedia as devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary. Founders skip the lessons that can be learned from competitors because they view the competitor as wrong in their approach. This also...

Product Segmentation Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Product segmentation creates different versions of the product for different users. Novice users may get a version that is simple to use while power users have access to tools that are more complex. One can achieve product segmentation by using a platform approa...

Illusion of Control Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The illusion of control phenomenon is defined by Wikipedia as the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events. Startups often display an illusion of control about how their product and sales efforts will take over a market. Just...